Why does your school or business need a social media presence?
It’s easy to let social media slip to the back burner when so many things demand your attention as head of your organization. Staff, parents, facilities. Every day brings a new challenge that needs immediate attention. Those couple of hours you penciled in to engage on social media and post to Facebook or Instagram disappear as you meet those immediate demands. Maybe tomorrow…
Sound familiar? It’s easy to put social media off. After all, it will still be there tomorrow. But there are so many benefits to being consistent with social media engagement. Putting it off keeps you from enjoying the business growth that is possible. Let’s look at the top three benefits of social media for business.
3 Benefits of social media for business
- Your audience is already there
- The conversation has already started, you need only join in consistently
- Advertising on social media is budget-friendly
Social media is the perfect place to raise awareness about your school or business. Your future families and customers are there, on social media, every day. When you participate in the conversations that are happening on social media, it gives you exposure to people who are looking for what you offer. When you initiate conversations by sharing your organization’s expertise it builds awareness, likability, and trust with people who need what you provide.
But seeing real results from social media engagement requires consistency. Studies have shown that posting 2-3 times per week, each and every week, is optimal for maintaining audience attention. A consistent presence extends your marketing reach. One of my clients reached 5,535 people with their posts this past month. Of those, 529 engaged with the content. How would 500 interested prospects help grow your school or business this month?
Using Facebook’s “Boost Post” feature lets you set the budget while simultaneously being super specific about who sees your post and the solution you provide. Want to reach parents with children under the age of 6, within 20 miles of your school? Facebook’s targeted ads can do that.
To make it even easier, any post you’ve added to your Facebook page can be shared with your specified audience as a boosted post. Just make sure your posts are ‘boost-worthy.’ You will want them to engage your current followers and also deliver a message that resonates with prospects.
Curating content is another way to streamline your social media marketing. Not all of your posts need to be original content. See a post in your feed that your business’s followers will find informative or helpful? Share it to your business’s page. Sharing the things others have posted is an easy way to expand your participation in social media.
Your Social Media Calendar
Setting up a social media calendar and combining that with one of the post scheduling tools that are available lets you plan, create, and “pre-post”. All at a time that is convenient for you. Scheduled posts then get released on the day and time you set.
A social media calendar can be as simple or complex as you’d like to make it. I use a simple spreadsheet to track ideas for posts, identify where it will be posted and when it should be posted. For more complex marketing strategies, the social media calendar can also track approvals and assign responsibility for content and graphics to different team members.
There are many tools available for creating content for your social media feed. My favorites are Canva for creating Facebook and Instagram posts that are precisely the right size and Later for setting up posts in advance.
Canva lets you use your own images, or take advantage of stock images available on the site. Create your post in Canva, then upload it to Later, where you can select the date and time that it should be posted to your feed. If you are using both Instagram and Facebook be sure to set up your Instagram account to post to Facebook at the same time. Using this feature you’ll double the impact of your post.
Social media can be daunting. So many options, so much to keep track of. But with a few tools and a process, a consistent social media outreach is within reach. Growing your audience on social media can grow enrollment and increase revenue.
If you need help setting up a process that keeps your school or business consistently engaging on social media, reach out and let’s talk.